Project Update

[Dingo]

@ Dataman    Yes I am spending the winter here in Arizona so not going to Australia till maybe next October if then.  It costs too much to go to Australia every year and the kids get sick of me after a while and the cost of living there is over the moon and I am on a fixed income.  I added a   I must have deleted the other one by mistake.  Smileys all seem to be getting bigger and bigger.

[Dataman]

@ Dataman    Yes I am spending the winter here in Arizona so not going to Australia till maybe next October if then.  It costs too much to go to Australia every year and the kids get sick of me after a while and the cost of living there is over the moon and I am on a fixed income.  I added a   I must have deleted the other one by mistake.  Smileys all seem to be getting bigger and bigger.

No worries it was just an idea.
The two vacationing r-boxes finally arrived and I just installed them. All 4 are working but the more of them I add to the array the slower all 4 go. The run times so far are less than impressive.   I should have better stats after they run all night. Maybe they have to warm to our "liquid" CA sunshine.   That completes the DM08 array.
The two U3's have already shipped (UPS) and may get here Friday. Those 4 will complete the DM04 array.
The R4 still has not shipped and am getting annoyed with the seller. It is always going to ship "tomorrow". That will be the only miner on DM02. (if I get it).
After all that is done, I am going to try to put 13 Gecko's on DM06. I doubt that it will work as it will probably consume all of the CPU but you never know 'till you try.  
The tracking for the r-boxes that just arrived shows it was sent back to New York City and delivered.  ??? The USPS could not find its butt if it were squatting over a mirror.  

[chooka03]

Dataman..... I'd love to see a picture of this setup once done.
I'm picturing a room/stdy with cables and stuff EVERYWHERE! lol. Sure will be a nice, warm & cozy house you'll have there 

[Dataman]

I'm picturing a room/stdy with cables and stuff EVERYWauthorHERE! lol. Sure will be a nice, warm & cozy house you'll have there  

OK. Actually, the setups are very neat and cables are tied and hidden for the most part. They are in 3 rooms to keep down the heat/noise and spread the electrical load. The r-boxes produce almost no heat and the air out the back is cooler than skin temperature. They also produce LOUSY results with run times from 900 sec to 12,000 sec. I am very disappointed but will check every thing out once again today.
The R4 shipped last night. It is my last hope or I have wasted a lot of money.
It continues to rain ...



EDIT: After a totally demoralizing morning staring at stderr's and rechecking everything, I can find nothing wrong. I'm done. I am going to surprise Karen and take her to brunch at the Cliff House. There we can sit in luxury and watch it rain on the American River rather than sit here and watch it rain on our leafless Oak trees.  Later folks ...

[Dingo]

Yes my U3's will arrive Mon 1/23/2017 by end of day according to Fedex.   I always manage to make a mess of wires and stuff behind the terminal.

[Dataman]

Oh, what a day it has been and very little of it good. Where to begin:
1. During breakfast this morning one of the r-boxes fried. There was a pop and a lot of smoke. I jumped up and shut down the PSU but it got so hot it melted the USB connector off the circuit board and some of the solder had run on the board. Fortunately it and the other three were in a rack and nothing caught fire. I salvaged the fans and tossed the rest.  

@JN: If yours is sitting on the floor I would strongly suggest you put it on something non-flammable and not conductive.

2. I hooked up the R4. It came already cabled and with a 750W Dell PSU (that was not in the description). It sounds like a 747 at full throttle!!! There is no way I can run it inside the house!! Win10 detects it as an unknown USB device. When Windows queries it, it does not respond and then Win10 disables it. When I try to load the zadig driver the installation fails. When I try to load WINUSB manually, Win10 keeps disabling it. I will try again tomorrow but the prognosis is not good. If I cannot get it to run I will file a claim and get a refund.  

3. I moved the poor performing r-box to a separate machine but it still has run times all over the place (but at least it works).   The other two are doing well with run times in the 13-17 min. range.  

4. I successfully got 13 Geckos to run on one machine with no performance problems (not yet at least).  

5. The two U3's arrive Monday. I hope my luck changes.  

I told Karen I needed many hugs and much sympathy. She complied and then told me not to turn on that noisy "thing" again.

Yep, it has been quite a day.



EDIT:
"Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me."

Roy Clark & Buck Owens

[Dingo]

It all makes life interesting, but I hope all goes well with the farm and the U3's on Monday.   

  My U3's arrive on Monday as well.

[chooka03]

Sounds like a U3 farm might be the safest, most efficient bet.

My U3 will probably arrive in....well who knows......3 weeks? Meh...whenever.

[Dataman]

It all makes life interesting, but I hope all goes well with the farm and the U3's on Monday.   

  My U3's arrive on Monday as well.

I think I snatched a wee bit of victory from the jaws of defeat. In a last desperate effort, I changed the power cable to the slow r-box and all three are running like a scalded dog. Maybe just a bad pin ??? Hope it stays stable all night.
Still no luck on the R4. I did get it to load the generic USB driver but zadig fails when trying to install WINUSB. I have run out of things to try. I will request a refund. I only paid $80 + shipping for it. The 750W PSU is worth that. Way too much noise anyway. If you cup your hands to your ears you can probably hear it. 

[Dataman]

Sounds like a U3 farm might be the safest, most efficient bet.

My U3 will probably arrive in....well who knows......3 weeks? Meh...whenever.

Is that the one from Croatia? I saw he sold his last one.

[chooka03]

Yes mate.
I saw it when he had 5 and was dubious due to his lack of selling on Ebay but he's been very helpful and it's in the post.
Apparently he has a U3 farm and is waiting for his Antminer S9's to arrive. He might sell off more of his U3's one day.

I'll ask him to let me know if he does.

I also note that the buyers of his other U3 have eBay feedback based on selling Bitcoin. They must use a farm and "rent" the usage for Bitcoin...or something like that.

[Daniel]

Is that the one from Croatia? I saw he sold his last one.

Yes, I've been watching him too.
I bought his second-last one.

[Dataman]

@ Chooka: Yes it is called a mining contract. You rent a device or the whole farm for a specified number of hours for a specified price. Not sure I would want to give my mining info to a third party.

@ Daniel: Good for you!! 

I came close to doing a half billion credits today. The 3 rocks are blazing away. Too bad the other one burnt down. Without the R4 though I will not achieve my goal of 1 billion/day.  Will post some questions in forums today to see if anyone has ideas. Everything checks out but it will not tell Win10 what it is. Wish I had an operating Win7 machine to test it on. I have run out of ideas.

More rain today and through Monday. Then we might see some sun.

[JugNut]

Eeek!! sorry to hear of your drama's DM,  i'm really not sure what to make of your R-box probs.  I know it's of no help to you but as I said before mine's been as reliable as a rock and far more reliable than the U3's.  So "touch wood" once you have things up & running they should stay that way for a good while.  I've never heard of an R-box 2 melting it's power cable but i'm sure such things are not as uncommon as they should be in the mining world.  I hope you get a refund at least?

Thanks for the tip about the R-box placement.  I certainly don't need any more dangers in my crunching cave, lord knows why it hasn't all imploded long ago is anyone's guess,  it's just good luck I suppose cause it's certainly not good management. My room should come with a warning over the door.  "Danger" children & small animals should not enter,  keep hands in pockets at all times & do not touch the burning hot miners. Also it's probably not a bad idea to hold your breath and never linger longer than 60 sec's at one time.  LOL
A slight exaggeration perhaps but lets just say it's a long way from being the safest place on earth.

As for the R4 I'll do some googling and see if I can find any tips for you.  But i'm sure your already way ahead of me there.

Anyway you know what they say, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.   Although I think I could make a pretty compelling argument that that saying is just straight out BS.

Mmm let's see...  Lets say you where in an horrific accident where through some miracle of science you were saved from death but had to eat & talk through your butt hole? Something tells me you would not think of yourself as any stronger?  LOL What do you think?

Crunch-on...



EDIT: This site has a pile of U3's(100+)  and relatively cheap too & free delivery.  Reliable? Who knows?

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/SHIPPING-new-arrival-ANTMINER-USB-miner-ASIC-Bitcoin-mining-machine-63GH-S-USB-Bitcoin-mining-machine/227686_32215896472.html

EDIT2: Just tried placing an order just to test the water. They have all been sold or removed from sale?? Sorry to get anyones hopes up.

[chooka03]

Mmm let's see...  Lets say you where in an horrific accident where through some miracle of science you were saved from death but had to eat & talk through your butt hole? Something tells me you would not think of yourself as any stronger?  LOL What do you think?

HAHAHAHA 

Saw the Aliexpress ones about 12 months ago. I think I'd be even more nervous buying out of China than Croatia 

If anyone's interested in a 30GH/s Butterfly Labs unit, I spoke to this seller and he said he'd take USD$40.00. That's still pretty expensive compared to the R4 Rockminer @ $80 but worthy of a mention.
I thought about buying it, then the U3 came up for less. Just thought I'd put it out there.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Butterfly-Labs-ASIC-Bitcoin-miner-30GHS-used-with-power-supply/182398850251?_trksid=p2045573.c100033.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D39923%26meid%3Db4416436b7154ab1a9ea6c876ccc311b%26pid%3D100033%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D8%26sd%3D172379100292